Abstract: In the process of industrial production, the temperature object of the nonlinear, large delay characteristics and its complex environment, which caused the control structure and the control algorithm studied in the simulator cannot be achieved the expected effect in the practical engineering application. In order to change this situation, this paper presents a hardware-based simulation platform for temperature control system design and research methods. On the platform, the temperature object is the actual electric heating water tank and its pipeline circuit, and the controller is realized by the simulation of Matlab, both through the I/O card connection. The results show that the design and algorithm research of the temperature control system on semi-physical simulation platform has more engineering application value than the research results in the simulation machine.